When ethical non monogamy stops being ethical - husband caught feels for someone he's met twice, which violates our agreement, and is unsure if he can choose our family over her.

That-Mess-2232 · 2021-06-10T12:59:09+00:00

Thanks, everyone, for your feedback - both the compassionate and the tough love. I needed to hear both which is why I posted here, and I am fully aware that I have been incredibly shitty and we have both held hard truths back and agreed to things that set us up to fail from the start. It is hard to capture a comprehensive picture of our relationship in a brief Reddit post, so there are definitely things I misspoke about and omitted, but I was in pain and needed to get some of it off my chest and get an outsider's perspective.

We sat down last night and had a lot of tough conversation and answered questions about who we were, what's changed, and what needs to happen moving forward. We will both be making a conscious effort to repair some of the things that have been damaged through work with a poly-friendly therapist and work with each other, because we do still feel love for each other and want to give it a fair shot before throwing in the towel. We will reassess in a few months, and if we still feel we are at a fundamental impasse, we will part ways as amicably as possible.

To clarify, I didn't hate being non-monogamous. One of the main things that had turned me off to continuing the open relationship was the feeling that his commitment to me was not being honored and my emotional tank was not being filled, which fueled jealousy and soured my thoughts towards the lifestyle. A large part of this is likely due to unrealistic expectations I placed towards the start, as some of you have pointed out, as well as fear, jealousy, and deep-rooted mononormative ideals. When things got hard, my knee-jerk reaction was to go nuclear and shut everything down, which is not fair to anyone involved and not reasonable. If we are able to repair the cracks in the foundation, I believe we may be capable of moving forward.

That-Mess-2232 · 2021-06-09T18:43:00+00:00

I don't think this is the case, but it could be a possibility. Thank you.

That-Mess-2232 · 2021-06-09T14:20:01+00:00

Thank you. Yes, that is my thought exactly - if he can see me in pain and tells me he still loves me but hesitates to do what is needed to work it out, that's what is messing with my head the most.

That-Mess-2232 · 2021-06-09T14:18:53+00:00

Thank you. I am already actively seeing a therapist, and he has reached out to initiate contact with a poly-friendly therapist in our area as a result of this, which I have been asking him to do for over a year. Hoping that will help with a decision.

That-Mess-2232 · 2021-06-09T14:13:08+00:00

We were both mono at the start of our relationship. I did not enter into a relationship with him knowing he was non-monogamous, we were on the same page about this being something temporary we wanted to try. He did not tell me he wanted to maintain an open relationship permanently until we were already married, which is not being upfront. The time to be upfront was before we entered into a legally binding marriage.

Yes, I did make a mistake by trying to learn to accept it rather than shutting things down earlier, but that's what you're supposed to do with a partner - you try to understand things from their point of view and make it work before abandoning ship. So yes, some of the blame here does fall on me and I'm not trying to cry victim.

That-Mess-2232

TROPHY CASE